Image copyrightReutersImage caption
Who is to blame, the president or the Congress?

US President Barack Obama has said: "The greatest nation on Earth can't keep on conducting its business drifting from one crisis to the next."

But it does. How did it get to this point?

It makes me think of those gruesome and rather unbelievable fairy tales.

Two brothers, the sort of brothers who hate each other very much, together own a farm and an estate.

They agree the land no longer flows with as much milk and honey as it once did, so they agree something must be done.

But they argue furiously about what that should be. One wants to raise rents on the richer tenants and spend the gold on gleaming new farm buildings and prize cattle.

The other brother grumbles that all these fancy projects caused the decline of milk and honey in the first place, along with free geese given to the growing band of widows, orphans and retired retainers.

They cannot agree. They must agree. So they make a dreadful pact. If by midnight in a year's time they have not found common ground, they will both make a horrible sacrifice.

The infant son of one brother will have an arm chopped off, while the other's baby daughter will forfeit a leg. To make sure this awful promise is kept the children are sent to live with a wicked witch in the woods.

Kicking the can

This, of course, is where such tales are rather unconvincing.

For no-one would really take that sort of risk in real life. Not unless they were American politicians.

Image copyrightReutersImage caption
President Obama has urged American voters to tell their congressmen they must make a deal

In our story, at midnight the brothers delayed the deal for eight more moons. But even granted another two months' grace after that they are now at the kitchen table, backs to each other, arms folded, only turning around to shout the occasional insult, apparently not over-worried by the fate of their children.